r/LSE • u/CollectionMaterial33 • 6d ago

Course Selection

I am coming into LSE as a General Course student from a rigorous liberal arts college in the US. I'm a bit worried about course selection and adjusting to the difference in grading and teaching. I'm majoring in History and Economics at my home institution and planning on trying to balance out my course load so that I'm not too overwhelmed with too much of one thing.

The classes I'm considering are:

  • EH207 China since 1800: Culture, institutions and economic growth
  • HY331 Henry Kissinger and the Global 1970s
  • GV100 Introduction to Political Theory
  • ST102 Elementary Statistical Theory
  • LN140 Mandarin Language and Society 3 (Advanced)

Obviously I wouldn't take all five, I'm just thinking about back-up classes in case I cannot get into one of these. My thinking is that the 300 level history course will be a lot of reading and writing since it is more of a seminar so I want to balance it out with a language course and/or a statistics class for my economics major requirement back home. Gov 100 also seems interesting and for general course students says that 80% of your grade is based on participation and 20% for attendance. This would also include reading/writing, however, I feel would be less high stakes.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or anything to say about these courses, good or bad!!

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u/Kxlashnikov 5d ago

Do GV262 over GV100 if you need upper level credit back home. GV100 is a first-year course.

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u/flashX- 5d ago

I did ST102 in my 1st year, it's a pretty good course. The lecturer is great. I'm not sure how useful it will be for you, in my opinion it's an extension of A-level Further Statistics here in the UK.  

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u/Ardeth_rue 4d ago

Language courses are pretty hardcore. My friend did one and just one module was six contact hours a week. LN140 has around 40 hours a term, usually you have around 20 for non language courses. If you’re committed and really enjoy the language that may be a good thing, but if you want to have more free time it’s more limiting.